Contents

May 2012

This month 6 If I ruled the world chris patten 8 Recommends 10 Diary 12 Letters

Opinions

14 Cameron: unlucky but right pier carlo padoan 15 Obama the Republican james kwak 16 Cairo farce wendell steavenson plus stephen collins’s cartoon strip. 18 Cutting Whitehall peter riddell 19 Mexico’s lost war on drugs luis rubio 19 Burma gold rush joshua kurlantzick 20 China diary mark kitto

Features 26 From Faust to Frankenstein market for everything. rowan williams 32 What Dave has done

What is the point of the coalition? philip collins 35 Cameron’s immigration problem peter kellner 36 Europe’s star? Poland has dodged the crisis.

sam knight 40 A strategic own goal? We have helped Iran rise.

robert fry 44 LBJ: from understudy to giant Robert Caro’s presidential epic.

sam tanenhaus

Politics: interview 22 I’m Labour’s biggest critic d Miliband warns against complacency. james macintyre

Life 56 A moveable feast

New vegetarianism. william skidelsky 57 Leith on life ge of trolls. sam leith 58 Volcanic impulses

In search of eruptions. gillian darley 60 Wine Do you have taste? barry smith

50 Playboy goes west great title heads into the sunset? rachel shteir

Report: emerging markets 63 China’s crash? george magnus 66 Brazil’s fragile success jim o’neill 68 China’s neighbours caroline shaw 70 Tapping into growth andy davis

Science & technology 72 One universe among many?

ur Big Bang might not be unique. martin rees 74 The month ahead anjana ahuja

Arts & books 76 America’s new literary generation

Jonathan Franzen versus Helen DeWitt. richard beck 79 For my next trick he new art of magic. laura marsh 82 Modern magus obert Wilson’s eccentric genius. james woodall 84 Stealing the show ovies on stage are rubbish. david benedict 86 The month in books kathryn hughes

Fiction 88 Debi mariam bekauri

Endgames 90 The Prospect List 94 The generalist didymus 94 Enigmas & puzzles ian stewart 96 The way we were xams. ian irvine may 2012 · prospect · 5